11.09.07

About a week ago we mentioned an off-topic (for this site) story. It was about Mandriva getting betrayed in Nigeria and we sort of predicted that the the full story was yet to be revealed.

Well, some answers are beginning to be brought up to the surface. Mandriva is able to roll back the corruption, so to speak.

After public statements from Mandriva officials implied the marketing deal is legally questionable, Microsoft said last week that it complies with international law and the law of the countries in which it operates.

Be aware of another bit of news that I spotted yesterday. The two abusive monopolists, Intel and Microsoft, are doing it again in Russia.

1999 China government got concerned with dependence on Microsoft, so it decided to develop its own open source software on the basis of Linux, called Red Flag Linux. In Russia a similar program has just been launched. Up to 2009 end all Russian schools are to be supplied with the open source software package, created by the Russian programmers.

That’s a classic example. It is case where two wealthy companies sieze control of territories by “dumping” (in the econonics sense) cheap products onto a market that chose a competitor’s product (GNU/Linux in this case, because over 10,000 Russian schools are to embrace Linux). They try to suppress and eliminate rivals in this way. It’s like a totalitarian regime which is chasing down citizens that deviate from the norm. Remember OLPC? Intel and Microsoft take the spotlight, again. Bill Gates’ charity often emerges as a pawn in this game (we have seen this many times before).

Stuart Scott, who joined Microsoft in 2005 as Corporate Vice President and Chief Information Officer, has left was ousted from the company, as of November 5 for violating company policies, Microsoft officials said.

“We have twice requested balances, payment reports and complete tax information, but the company hasn’t given it to us, so in accordance with our laws we have proceeded with the closure,” the SRI official in charge of the proceeding said.

To make matters more murky, the sales were not registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission within the mandatory two days of the transaction, a result of an alleged “administrative error.” Microsoft has since remedied the issue by following the “procedures required of late-filers.”

Microsoft Corp. executive Robbie Bach sold $3 million more in company stock during the period leading up to an announcement about a costly flaw in its Xbox video game console than previously reported, according to a filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

MarketWatch.com reports that Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division, sold $6.2 million of Microsoft stock just prior to announcing that Microsoft was going to have to extend XBox 360 warranties to three years because of extensive failures. The filings note that this was not part of any scheduled diversification or selling program; this was a conscious, unscheduled sale by the guy in charge of releasing news that could affect the value of Microsoft stock.

[...]

Insider trading is a very serious violation of the law; just ask Martha Stewart, who served five months in prison for avoiding losses of $43,000 through trades that just had suspicious timing (no insider trading was actually proven). This is $6.3 million that went straight into Robbie Bach’s pocket.

When you control the Department of Justice, then you can do just about anything. I could go a little further and find many older stories that illustrate corruption at Microsoft. OOXML-related stories are excluded in this post as well because they already exist somewhere in our archives. And let’s not get started with Intel and with Disney, which are completely off-topic for this Web site.

Update: just hours ago, an article was published which described another (new) ‘anti-GNU/Linux’ initiative.

Observers say MAR also attempts to ameliorate another risk: that refurbishers, frustrated by the high cost and difficulty of following Microsoft’s arcane Windows licenses to the letter, will simply install a free Linux operating system on renewed PCs instead.

Some resellers “are saying, ‘We’re just going to ship this stuff out with Ubuntu Linux,’” said Adam Braunstein, an analyst with the Robert Frances Group.

There is probably no law against practices that Microsoft uses here, but this well-coordinated suppression of competition ought to invoke the wrath of observers such as the European Commission, which strives to restore competition and revert back the market to a healthier state. Mind the Cringely quote which started off a similar post. It was published just a couple of days ago.

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What Else is New

The latest tactics of the patent microcosm are just about as distasteful as last month's (or last year's), with focus shifting to the courts and few broadly-misinterpreted patent cases (mainly Finjan, Berkheimer, and Aatrix)

The fightback against Section 101 and the US Supreme Court (notably Alice) seems to concentrate on old and new buzzwords, such as "Software as a Medical Device" ("SaMD") or "Fourth Industrial Revolution" ("4IR"), which the EPO recently paid European media to spread and promote

Infomercials are still dominant among news about patents, in effect drowning out the signal (real journalism) and instead pushing agenda that is detached from reality, pertinent facts, objective assessment, public interest and so on

A discussion about the infamous abundance of patent cases in the Eastern District of Texas (TXED/EDTX) and what this will mean for businesses that have branches or any form of operations there (making them subjected to lawsuits in that district even after TC Heartland)

The patent microcosm is so eager to stop the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that it's supporting sham deals (or "scams") and exploits/distorts the voice of the new USPTO Director to come up with PTAB-hostile catchphrases

Judgmental patent maximalists are still respecting high courts only when it suits them; whenever the outcome is not desirable they're willing to attack the legitimacy of the courts and the competence of judges, even resorting to racist ad hominem attacks if necessary

With or without the Unified Patent Court (UPC), which is the wet dream of patent trolls and their legal representatives, the EPO's terrible policies have landed a lot of low-quality patents on the hands of patent trolls (many of which operate through city-states that exist for tax evasion -- a fiscal environment ripe for shells)

The money-obsessed, money-printing patent office, where the assembly line mentality has been adopted and patent-printing management is in charge, is devaluing or diluting the pool of European Patents, more so with restrictions (monetary barriers) to challenging bad patents

he media in Europe continues to be largely apathetic towards the EPO crisis, instead relaying a bunch of press releases and doctored figures from the EPO; only blogs that closely follow EPO scandals bothered mentioning the new petition

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) sees the number of filings up to an almost all-time high and efforts to undermine PTAB are failing pretty badly -- a trend which will be further cemented quite soon when the US Supreme Court (quite likely) backs the processes of PTAB

The EPO is trying very hard to silence not only the union but also staff representatives; it's evidently worried that the lies told by Team Battistelli will be refuted and morale be affected by reality

Suspicions that Iancu might destroy the integrity of the Office for the sake of the litigation ‘industry’ may be further reaffirmed by the approach towards patent maximalists from IAM, who also participated in the shaming of his predecessor, Michelle Lee, and promoted a disgraced judge (and friend of patent trolls) for her then-vacant role